Symbiota Portals

The following Symbiota portals represent networks or multiple collections within an institution , most portals have specific regional and/or taxonomic scopes. Each portal represents the community of collaborating researchers that manage the core scientific data.

Symbiota offers an efficient and cost-effective mechanism for documenting biodiversity occurrences from specimens and observations by providing tools to share, visualize and synthesize biodiversity data . The basic functions are reliable and easy to learn and use, whereas more seasoned users can integrate the advanced functions making powerful data products leading to the generation of data-driven publications. Symbiota provides specific data packaging functions (e.g., checklist management), visualization tools (occurrence mapping and specimen images), analyses (computer-vision image processing through Fieldguide), education materials (identification keys and quizzes), and options to quickly configure and download datasets in .csv format. Thus, Symbiota portals allow researchers to compile and screen data sets for further analysis, or educators to integrate biodiversity data for use in the classroom.

If you are interested in becoming a data contributor for an already established data portal, contact the portal administrator for more information on gaining access to their data editing tools. For more information on what is involved in being a data provider, read the Specimen Integration  page.

Callosamia promethea (Drury, 1773)

Callosamia promethea (Drury, 1773) Photo courtesy of Arizona State University Hasbrouck Insect Collection (ASU). Catalog #ASUHIC0001263

Alphabetical Quick Index

SEINet Network of North American Plant Herbaria

The SEINet North American plant network was the first Symbiota-based project to be configured as a fully integrated portal network. For more information and a list of the partners, visit the SEINet partnership page.

Consortium of California Herbaria (CCH2)

CCH2 serves data from specimens housed in member herbaria of the Consortium of California Herbaria (CCH). This portal has a worldwide scope and a broad taxonomic basis. These data are currently growing due to the work of the California Phenology Thematic Collections Network (CAP-TCN).

Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria

The Consortium of North American Bryophyte Herbaria (CNABH) data portal was created to serve as a gateway to distributed bryophyte resources of particular interest to the research community in North America. Through a common web interface, CNABH offers tools to locate, access and work with a variety of bryophyte data.

Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaria

The Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaria (CNALH) data portal was created to serve as a gateway to distribute lichen resources of particular interest to the taxonomic and environmental research community in North America. Through a common web interface, CNALH offers tools to locate, access and work with a variety of lichen data, such as interactive keying to species.

Consortium of Northeastern Herbaria Portal

The CNH portal provides access to herbarium specimen data housed in member institutions, with particular emphasis on specimens collected in the region. The database includes taxa traditionally found in herbaria, including plants, fungi, diatoms, algae, and lichens.

Consortium of Small Vertebrate Collections (CSVColl)

The Consortium of Small Vertebrate Collections is a growing network of research, academic, and museum institutions focused on the study of birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, and reptiles. It is a collaborative venture of iDigBio and Arizona State University and provides a mechanism for network members to manage and share biodiversity data to scientists and the general public. Participating institutions are afforded sophisticated online data management tools without the need for onsite IT support.

Cooperative Taxonomic Resource for American Myrtaceae

Cooperative Taxonomic Resource for American Myrtaceae (CoTRAM) was created to aid researchers of American Myrtaceae, as well as help others learn more about this taxonomic group. The objective of this project is to create a Myrtaceae-specific web resource that is scientifically based upon authority-identified specimens and images. Web resources available include regional checklists, images, identification keys, and distribution maps.

Herbario Virtual Austral Americano

The purpose of the Herbario Virtual Austral Americano (HVAA) data portal is primarily to support the distribution of herbarium specimen data for plants that grow in southern South America (Argentina and Chile). This specimen-based resource is specifically designed to integrate and distribute natural history information from multiple sources, including images, descriptive text, checklists, interactive keys and museum specimen data.

MacroAlgal Herbarium Consortium Portal

Data provided through this project portal will allow researchers to determine how macroalgal biodiversity and our aquatic ecosystems have changed over the past 150 years as a result of climate change, bioinvasions, and a wide range of human activity.

Mycology Collections Data Portal

The Mycology Collections data Portal (MyCoPortal) is a suite of user-friendly, web-based data access technologies to aid taxonomists, field biologists, ecologists, educators, and citizen scientists in the study of fungal diversity. The data is derived from a network of universities, botanical gardens, museums, and agencies that provide taxonomic, environmental, and specimen-based information.

Symbiota Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN) and LepNet

This portal brings together North American arthropod collections and beyond to create a virtual information network of arthropod occurrences and images. This portal also hosts data from the Lepidoptera Network of North America Network (LepNet)

  • https://scan-bugs.org
  • Sponsor:
    • NSF  DBI 1207371: Southwest Collections of Arthropods Network (SCAN): A Model for Collections Digitization to Promote Taxonomic and Ecological Research
    • NSF EF 1602081 Lepidoptera of North America Network: Documenting Diversity in the Largest Clade of Herbivores

InvertEBase Data Portal

The TCN “InvertEBase” is a 4-year collaborative effort to digitize specimen records from ten arthropod and mollusk collections housed at six major US museums in six states, three of them ranking among the top 10 collections in the world.

Great Lakes Invasives Network

This bi-national thematic collections network of >20 institutions from eight states and Canada will digitize 1.73 million historical specimens representing 2,550 species of exotic fish, clams, snails, mussels, algae, plants, and their look-alikes documented to occur in the Great Lakes Basin.

Neotropical Flora Portal

In development – emphasis on herbarium collections with a New World tropical concentration.

Madrean Discovery & Madrean Archipelago Biodiversity Assessment Project

The Madrean Archipelago Biodiversity Assessment Project (MABA) virtual data portals were created to serve as a gateway for the research community and general public to access a growing collection of specimen and observations records obtained from the Sky Island Region of southwestern US and northern Mexico.

Documenting Ethnobiology in Mexico and Central America (DEMCA)

Documenting Ethnobiology in Mexico and Central America (DEMCA) is a data portal in development for the presentation, exchange and discussion of traditional ecological knowledge, particularly the nomenclature, classification and symbolic and economic use of flora and fauna in Indigenous communities of this region.

Consortium of Pacific Herbaria (CPH)

The Consortium of Pacific Herbaria (CPH) supports the enhancement of research cyberinfrastructure within Hawai’i and the Pacific basin for implementing shared specimen data hosting of plant specimens.

Open Herbarium

OpenHerbarium enables herbaria and taxonomists to collaborate in making specimen data available and in building resources such as taxon pages, checklists, and identification tools.

Institutional Portals

Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas

Institutional portal for the Bell Museum of Natural History.

Monarch

Institutional portal for the California Academy of Sciences. In development.

University of Colorado Herbarium

Institutional portal for the Museum of Natural History on the campus of the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)

An all taxa portal established to feature Panamanian biodiversity using a data foundation built upon the integration of multiple STRI research datasets.

Channel Islands Biodiversity Portal (Cal-IBIS)

This is a synthetic multiphyla portal that provides occurrence data for all animals and plants for the Channel Islands (United States and Mexico).  For decades, the agencies and organizations of the California Islands have prioritized inter-island meetings, recognizing that we share common challenges, goals and solutions.

http://www.cal-ibis.org/